Reducing the Nutrition Facts table’s “daily value” for sodium from 2,400 mg to 1,500 mg, mandate standardized serving sizes as the basis for reporting nutrition information, and retrofit labels to facilitate improved consumer understanding after the US Institute of Medicine’s report on front-of-pack food labelling is published in 2011

Ensure regulatory standards for products using protected names like cheese and pickles to permit the use of low-sodium salt substitutes;

Include sensible sodium limits in government food-service policies and procurement contracts (e.g., for schools, hospitals, and the military);

Retrofit advice in Canada’s Food Guide on caloric intake and sodium.

But please folks, don't hold your breath until these get done. Not to be a killjoy but I can't help but think of the wonderful recommendations that came out of Canada's 2006 Trans-fat Task Force which have yet to be acted upon.

Hat tip to my friend and colleague Arya Sharma for his tweet which pointed me to the latest from across the pond.

Apparently Anne Milton (pictured up above) the British parliamentary under-secretary of state for health, has called upon GPs to start calling their patients "fat" so as to "inspire" them to take, "personal responsibility" for their weight.

Of course the notion that obesity is a disease of the individual, of "personal responsibility" and not a disease of a toxic, obesogenic environment is one near and dear to the food industry's so-called heart.

As I've reported this week on my blog, the messages the food industry want shouted from the rooftops include:

- There's no such thing as a bad food.- Obesity is caused by inactivity and treated through exercise.- It's about "balancing" energy in vs. energy out.- It's about taking "personal responsibility".

And lately British health officials have been singing all four.

I know I have some British readers and wondering if you folks might know - is there a transparent means whereby money spent by the food industry lobby on your politicians can be tracked? Given what's come out of the mouths of your officials these past 2 years, I'd be willing to wager tens of millions of pounds are involved.

To add to Anne's crystal clear clarion call of stupidity, here's a quick recap of what were once only the wet dreams of British food marketers yet now are their daily realities:

Jan. 2009 - England's government launches 3 year "Change4Life", food industry funded and government overseen program replete with useless messages of the, "Eat less, exercise more" camp with emphasis on the "exercise more".

June 2010 - England's Health Minister Andrew Lansley slams Jamie Oliver inspired school lunches campaign that led to the removal of processed garbage from middle schools.

July 2010 - England's Health Minister Andrew Lansley spews the food industry party lines of, "there's no such thing as a bad food", to the Faculty of Public Health in London while informing them of the British government's divestment of any involvement in Change4Life. He then tells them he's turning over direct control of Change4Life to the food industry and in return for their continued funding he's promised not to regulate them.

July 2010 - England strips their Food Standards Agency (FSA) of their food labeling responsibilities because they had been pressing for the adoption of front-of-package traffic light labeling. Now that labeling's been formally returned to the hands of industry's best friend Andrew Lansley, guess what? No traffic lights.

All I can say is good thing they've no longer got an exclusively socialized medical system over there for so long as the likes of Anne Milton and Andrew Lansley are at their health system's helm, that system's in big trouble.

His career has been exceedingly illustrious. Ornish is a best-selling author, a world-class researcher, an award-winning physician and he was voted "one of the most interesting people of 1996" by People magazine, one of the "TIME 100" in integrative medicine, one of LIFE magazine's "fifty most influential members of their generation" and one of Forbes magazine's "seven most powerful teachers in the world."

Pretty lofty stuff.

So what does one of the most powerful teachers in the world and one of the most influential members of their generation want to teach you?

Now I don't disagree entirely with Ornish in that a sustainable lifestyle does need to include such things as chocolate bars, but I'm not about to start selling them for Mars Inc.

Not so with Dr. Ornish. His message, that joy is a powerful medicine, when grabbed hold of by Mars' marketers gets spun into this message taken directly from their website,

"At Mars, our products provide opportunities for people across the world to practice pleasure in balance every day. Mars chocolate products should be enjoyed in moderation as part of a healthy and well-balanced lifestyle – and bring people small moments of joy in the process.In fact, our vision is to make more moments of joy in more places, bringing more smiles into the world. We’re in the business of making people feel good, and that means being a part of a balanced and healthy lifestyle that supports your physical and emotional well-being. .

We love being a part of many different kinds of chocolate moments.

A child sharing a treat with a friend.

Parents enjoying a quiet moment together at the end of a busy day.

A small celebration after a successful meeting.

Sweet memories from holidays, parties and gatherings.

More Moments. More Places. More Smiles."

Not less chocolate - more.

More chocolate in more places.

How many joyful chocolate moments is Ornish helping to sell? Again, according to the Mars website,

"At Mars, we're responsible for more than 500 million chocolate moments each day! And our vision is to make more moments of joy in more places - bringing more smiles into the world."

And now Dr. Dean Ornish, one of our generation and world's most influential teachers, lends (sells) his powerful voice to that vision, a vision that can be summarized as.

More, not less; there is no such thing as a "bad food"; and really all you need is a balanced active lifestyle.

Shameful is too soft a word to describe Dr. Ornish's cozy conflict of interest with Mars.

That said I probably shouldn't be surprised. After all, before Dean Ornish was using his world class influence and teaching abilities to sell chocolate bars, he was using it to sell Big Macs.

"To make physical activity and exercise a standard part of a disease prevention and treatment medical paradigm in the United States.

and,

"For physical activity to be considered by all health care providers as a vital sign in every patient visit, and that patients are effectively counseled and referred as to their physical activity and health needs, thus leading to overall improvement in the public's health and long-term reduction in health care cost."

It's not so much that I'm knocking it, more I'm questioning its role, as Big Food conspiracist that I am, I see a dual role for Exercise is Medicine.

On the one hand its role is to encourage exercise for health - a true, valuable and important endeavour.

But on the other hand, its other role is to serve its founding sponsor Coca-Cola, in the promotion of the assertion that the best means to deal with our current obesity epidemic is to ensure that people exercise. Or to put it another way, that sugary soda's not a bad thing so long as you live an active lifestyle.

The "obesity can be treated effectively through exercise alone" message, crucial to the purveyors of high calorie foods everywhere, is indeed spread by Exercise is Medicine,

"This is just the beginning. Hopefully, the insurance and medical communities will soon realize that the most effective way to treat and prevent a wide variety of obesity-related conditions is through exercise."

"As a whole, people are significantly less active today, even compared to just 20 years ago. When we look at the data that shows how diseases like obesity and diabetes are rapidly increasing, there's an obvious correlation to the decline in physical activity.

Even though everyone has heard it before, something as simple as taking the steps instead of an elevator can make a big difference. It's too easy to consume a massive amount of calories and sit at a desk all day - both of which have negative consequences to our health. We need to remember to take breaks during the day to take a ten minute walk. Any bit of activity is better than being sedentary."

"Dr. Sallis poses this question to health-care providers: "What if there was one prescription that could prevent and treat dozens of diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension and obesity? Would you prescribe it to your patients? Certainly."

Well, there is one prescription available to you that will do just that. It's called exercise."

- Dr. Robert Sarlis, past President of the American College of Sports Medicine (a founding partner of Exercise is Medicine) to Charleston's Sunday Gazette-Mail, March 7th, 2010

"The International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association (IHRSA) announced today their partnership with the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine (ILM); a division of Harvard Medical School's Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and of Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. IHRSA and ILM join together to fight the global obesity epidemic by working to improve physician knowledge of the science and benefits of physical activity, and to increase the practice of physician-prescribed exercise."

- Press release from Active Doctors, an organization whose President is part of Exercise is Medicine's Task Force, May 19th, 2009

"In an effort to decrease the prevalence of childhood obesity and promote physical activity to children, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) has announced a partnership with the Youth Fitness Coalition (YFC). This partnership will feature ACSM's Exercise is Medicine(TM) initiative, designed to encourage America's patients to incorporate physical activity and exercise into their daily routine, and YFC's signature program, Project ACES (All Children Exercise Simultaneously)."

- Press release from the American College of Sports Medicine, March 10th, 2009

The message that obesity can be prevented or treated with exercise is an important one to the food industry as it shifts the blame for obesity from the consumption of their calorific products to a decline in fitness, a link which at best is described as debatable and at worst, inconsequential. It also fuels Big Food's ability to preach about what Coca-Cola refers to as, "an active, balanced lifestyle", McDonald's a, "balanced, active lifestyle" and "it's what i eat and what i do ... i'm lovin' it" campaign, Pepsi a, "balanced lifestyle", Unilever a, "balanced diet and lifestyle", Mars a "well-balanced lifestyle", and Nestlé' a, "balanced lifestyle".

That the message is being spread by Exercise is Medicine and sometimes directly and other times by extension by the exceedingly reputable organizations included in Exercise is Medicine 397 signatory partners helps embolden the purveyors of calorific foods to make statements like Pepsi CEO's Indra Nooyi's,

"If all consumers exercised, did what they had to do, the problem of obesity wouldn't exist."

"And we're for active lifestyles, with more than 6 billion Diet Coke packages helping the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute remind women about the importance of staying active and maintaining a healthy weight, and our support of physical activity initiatives like Exercise Is Medicine."

Ultimately, while exercise is indeed medicine, Exercise is Medicine again illustrates the risks and inherent conflicts of interest consequent to Big Food partnerships, and I would argue these risks and conflicts shouldn't come as a big surprise.

Why?

Because Big Food doesn't care about your health; they don't care about your well-being; and they don't care if you exercise. All Big Food cares about is whether or not you'll buy their products, and certainly every single dollar they spend on programs such as Exercise is Medicine are earmarked to further that goal. A goal Coca-Cola's certainly meeting as last week they reported North American sales volume growth for the first time in two years which led Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent to proclaim,

"We firmly believe that North America will be a growth market of great opportunity for the next 10 years and beyond"

So while the notion of Big Food capitalizing on their investments in programs such as Exercise is Medicine to fuel sales isn't in and of itself surprising, what is surprising to me is the fact that well intentioned individuals, along with top-notch medical and public health organizations, don't seem to realize it, or simply don't care.

[For some further reading on what I think about "balanced, active lifestyles", please have a read of the article I co-authored this year, Running Away with the Facts on Food and Fitness, published in the journal Public Health Nutrition]

Monday, July 26, 2010

This month the Annals of Family Medicine published a point/counterpoint discussion of last year's awful decision by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) to partner up with Coca-Cola.

Howard Brody, arguing that the AAFP's deal was clearly a conflict of interest, explains that by definition a conflict of interest,

"arises when individuals or organizations enter into a set of arrangements which under usual circumstances would lead to the reasonable presumption that they will be tempted to put aside their primary interests in favor of a secondary set of interests."

and that,

"It is true that where a conflict of interest exists, no actual unethical behavior has necessarily arisen."

Meaning that simply having the opportunity for a conflict of interest is in and of itself a conflict, and certainly having Coca Cola fund and/or write educational materials on beverage consumption for the AAFP in return for $600,000 sure smells like a conflict of interest waiting to happen.

Howard then does a fine job of describing the most common arguments against perceived conflicts which include:Premature accusations: How can you accuse the AAFP of having a conflict? You haven't even seen the educational materials yet!

The other party's not evil: There's no conflict - just because Coca-Cola contributes to obesity doesn't make their parent company evil.It'd be wrong not to engage: Conflict or not, it'd be wrong not to enter into a partnership with Coca-Cola because we'd be missing out on an opportunity to influence their behaviour for the good.

Counterpoint was delivered by Lori Heim, current President of the AAFP (I interviewed her about the Coca-Cola partnership when it went down).

Basically Lori's argument boils down to Howard's premature accusations piece as she notes,

"Integral to this discussion is the transparency of the interaction, the rules governing the interaction, and the outcome of the agreement. Examined only in a philosophical vacuum, issues of conflict of interest and the underlying ethics governing behavior become an ideological straitjacket."

She then goes on to talk about the AAFP's great core values, the scourge of obesity in society and finally how great the educational materials are on the AAFP site and cites two statements that explicitly call for a reduction in sugar sweetened beverages.

You know, I agree with Lori - you can't examine the partnership in a philosophical vacuum, nor a practical one. What do I mean? Well while the duelling Annals pieces were an interesting read, I think they're rather beside the point as I'd argue there's a further litmus test for a conflict of interest, one that a philosophical or practical vacuum would ignore. I'm calling it the, "innocence by association" test.

Here's the basic premise: If your partnership with a corporation, regardless of the details or outcomes of that partnership, provides that corporation with the ability to use your partnership as a means to defend products, practices or positions that in turn are contrary to your or your organization's primary obligations, then partnership with said corporation should rightly be described as a conflict of interest.

In this case, if Coca Cola can or does use their partnership with the AAFP, an organization whose obligations lie with the betterment and protection of public health, to defend products, practices or positions which in turn are harmful to public health, then AAFP's partnership with Coca-Cola should be considered a conflict of interest.

"We formed a red ribbon panel of experts from organizations such as the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the Canadian Diabetes Association to nominate torchbearers for Coca-Cola who committed to leading more active lifestyles and encouraging others to do the same."

Maybe I'm just a simple man, but to me it seems pretty black and white. If you enter into a partnership with an organization whose products are anathema to you or your organization's aims it's a conflict of interest. The fact that the AAFP doesn't admit to that in the case of Coca-Cola is shameful and disingenuous and frankly I'd have preferred it if they simply came out and admitted the truth - yes, it's a terrifically unsavory conflict of interest, but hey, we needed the money.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Brian Wansink coined the term, "Health Halo" when he was studying consumer behaviours when faced with healthier sounding front of package statements and restaurants perceived as healthier.

Words like, "low fat", "low carb", while not formal health claims in terms of function, still have strong influence on consumer perception, ingestion and likely purchase.

I couldn't help but think of Dr. Wansink's work yesterday when I read an article in the Big Food e-tradezine Food Navigator. The article detailed Kellogg's new cereal brand that they claim, "makes no health claims".

So what does 82 ingredients including not 1, not 2, not 3, not 4, not 5, but 6 different artificial colours (including one that now has to have a warning label slapped on it in the EU) buy you nutritionally?

170 calories per cup dry (not wonderful for a cereal)200mg of sodium (meh)10g of fibre (holy crap - no pun intended)12g of sugar (3 teaspoons worth)And a smattering of vitamins including some "antioxidants"

Kellogg's of course isn't stupid. They're simply expecting consumers who don't take the time to think about what they're eating and read food labels to be saying, "you had me at antioxidants" when they walk down the cereal aisle.

Sure, there's no formal health claim, but that doesn't change the fact that this Frankencereal is banking on the words "FiberPlus" and "Antioxidants" to serve a health halos whose job it is to dupe you into thinking that what's in the box is good for you, which it probably is.....if you're a shareholder.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Simple study published in Food and Nutrition Research to look at the differences between whole foods and processed foods and the calories the body utilizes to metabolize them (something called diet induced thermogenesis and also known as the thermic effect of food).

18 subjects were enrolled in a cross-over study (meaning they each ate both test meals) whereby the thermic effect of food was measured following the ingestion of two different cheese sandwiches.

One cheese sandwich was made with cheddar cheese and a multi-grain bread containing whole sunflower seeds and whole-grain kernels, while the other cheese sandwich was made with white bread and processed cheese.

Both sandwiches contained the same number of calories.

The results?

While subjects reported that the whole food sandwich was tastier, both sandwiches conferred equal levels of satiety, and in a not completely surprising, but ultimately fascinating result, eating the whole food sandwich led to roughly double the thermic effect of food than the processed sandwich and that effect lasted nearly an hour longer than the processed meals.

Why wasn't this surprising?

Whole grains take longer to digest due to the protective fibrous sheath that processing removes. We also would expect the whole grain sandwich to have more protein and fat (which it did) which in turn delays the speed with which the body is able to break down its accompanying carbohydrates.

Calorically what does this mean?

It takes more energy to release the nutrients of the whole food sandwich with the differences between meals resulting in a 9.7% increase in the net energy gain of the processed food meal.

Translation?

Eat processed crap and you're effectively consuming 10% more calories than you would be were you eating healthier whole food alternatives.

Now this is a small study and certainly it's too soon to extrapolate this across the board, but were it to be true for all processed foods, given their viral spread across the developed world these past 30 years, and given that a 10% net energy gain is huge, this might be another great reason to ditch the Wonder bread and Velveeta.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Last week Burger King Canada announced new nutritional criteria for their advertised kids' meals. I'll come back to that word, "advertised" in a bit, but wanted to look at what Burger King thinks their healthier kids' meals should contain:

1. No more than 560 calories2. No more than 600mg of sodium3. Less than 30 percent of the calories from fat4. Less than 10 percent of calories from saturated fat5. No added trans fat6. No more than 10 percent of calories from added sugars

Doesn't sound particularly healthy to me. 560 calories is still more than a child should consume in a single meal. 600mg of sodium is half a day's worth. The calories from fat and saturated fat stuff I don't care too much about. No trans fats - seems like a no brainer. I was pleased however to see the no more than 10% of calories from added sugars as that's the World Health Organization's recommendation.

1. No caloric limits2. Allows up to 720mg of sodium3. Similar limit on total fat4. Similar limit on saturated fat5. Allows 5% of fat to be artery clogging trans-fat (and here I thought zero trans fat was a "no-brainer")6. No limit on added sugar

Man, if I was the marketing director of Burger King's brand I'd be all over this as for those keeping score, compared with Burger King's, Health Check's kids' meals allow for unlimited calories, ignore added sugar, allow for a whopping amount of trans-fat and allow for 20% more sodium.

So should we be cheering for Burger King? I'm not. Ultimately this is just smoke and mirrors as their new dramatically stricter than Health Check but still weak nutritional criteria only apply to their "advertised" kids meals and likely is just another ploy to appease parents and try to steer governments away from considering regulations.

Interesting too that a day after the announcement the media was all over it and rightly pointed out the hollowness of Burger King's pledge. What a shame the media doesn't hold Health Check and the Heart and Stroke Foundation up to the same degree of scrutiny.

Monday, July 19, 2010

I know people like to blame obesity for everything. Every disease, every problem - everything.

You know what I'm blaming on it today? Authors' and peer reviewers' attitudes about their studies and results.

Last Tuesday I was asked by CTV to read a study that was pending publication in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society so that I could comment on it for the national news. The study looked at 8,745 women between the ages of 65-79 free of dementia and evaluated their weight and waist to hip ratios in relation to their scores on the 3MSE, a modified mini-mental state examination validated to give an overview of cognitive function.

So I read the study.

Want to know what I found out?

That after controlling for age and education the test scores of folks whose BMI's were <25 were 95.2 while those whose BMIs were >40 were 94.1. I also discovered that the authors failed to provide the p value (the number whereby you'd see what the likelihood simple chance would lead to the result) for that comparison but they did provide a p value for the larger difference when age and education weren't controlled for and guess what, that p value, the one that looked at an even larger variance in test scores, wasn't even close to significant (at 0.10 there was a 10% likelihood the result occurred solely due to chance).

So basically in a best case scenario the authors could conclude that obesity may lead people to score a single percentage point lower on a test of global cognition but they'll point out at least that the difference in scores could easily have occurred due to chance. Worst case? They'll make it sound important so that they could get published.

My take? I took it to read that obesity doesn't lead to any statistically significant differences in a test of global cognition and that consequently it would seem that obesity and cognition aren't too tightly linked - a result that perhaps is bolstered by the fact that abdominal obesity appeared to be beneficial (though I should note, it may simply be due to the fact the researchers didn't measure waist circumference properly as rather than use a consistent bony landmark they used the floating umbilicus).

So what did the authors conclude?

"Higher BMI was associated with poorer cognitive function in women with smaller WHR....Further research is needed to clarify the mechanism for this interaction".

What I wrote back to CTV was the following,

"It would have to be an unbelievably slow news day for this to make the rotation."

And yet it was all over the news.

Sigh.

The media? I can forgive them, they're just trying to sell stories.

The authors? I can almost forgive them too as certainly negative publication bias might have precluded this piece and it's a publish or perish world.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Today's Funny Friday video is entertaining, funny and oddly heartwarming as it covers Jewel, in a disguise, singing Jewel songs at a karaoke bar and for reasons I can't seem to really pin down, I'd rate this one a must watch.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

The world is obscenely calorific. Calories are everywhere. Restaurant salads can have over 1,000. Kids' meals even more and with our supersized foodscape, almost nothing is safe.

So let's shift gears and talk money.

Let's pretend you got dropped into an exotic foreign country and while there were price tags on everything, you didn't know the exchange rate. Sure you might know that more was more expensive, but could you really be sure you weren't overspending?

Or how about if you got hired for a job but weren't told your salary. How would you budget your monthly expenditures?

Now back to calories.

In a survey conducted by the International Food Information Council Foundation (a Big Food funded organization), only 12% of those surveyed knew how many calories they burned a day.

What that means of course is that Americans (and probably it's a finding that's true the world over) don't have a clue how many calories they need in a daytime, and so even though calories are posted on nutritional facts panels and in some jurisdictions even on menu boards, how are they going to do any good?

These results should serve to alert allied health professionals and public health officials that in the absence of an anchoring statement regarding how many calories a person needs, initiatives like mandatory menu labeling will fall deaf on ignorant ears.

What we really need are public health officials to provide us with a Calories 101 campaign (like the one in the photo up above from New York's forward thinking, "Read 'Em Before You Eat 'Em" campaign) because if people don't know how many they've got to spend in a day, how can they possibly be expected to navigate our increasingly obesogenic food environment?

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Thanks to blog reader Craig for forwarding me a report on the EU's approval of a new chewable tablet of Lipitor (the cholesterol lowering medication) geared for use in kids ages 10 and up.

And according to a study published yesterday in the Journal Pediatrics, the market's probably bigger than once thought. The lead researcher of the study, one where over 20,000 kids' cholesterol levels were screened, was quoted by the Wall Street Journal as stating that current pediatric cholesterol screening guidelines would have missed 36% of kids with, "seriously high LDL".

Monday, July 12, 2010

How's this for the dumbest thing you've ever heard a country do to help combat obesity - England has just turned over the reins for it's already crappy Change4Life program (I've blogged about it before) to the food industry and in return for Big Food's help the government's already promised not to mess with them anymore when it comes to things like labeling, taxes or other nutritional regulations or reforms.

I have no words and as regular readers know, it's tough to render me speechless.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

First found by the folks over at Food Beast (that's their picture too - thanks Food Beast!) may I introduce to you the Foot Long Cheeseburger.

While there are no numbers on it yet, if we take a look at Carl's Jr.'s bacon cheeseburger's calories and multiply by 3 it may well run you in the neighbourhood of 2,460 calories and 5,070mg of sodium.

For those who like comparisons that'd be eating the caloric and sodium equivalent of roughly 5 KFC Double Downs.

Cost per calorie? Well we can't use the $4 cost because that doesn't include bacon but $7 apparently does so that'd be 3.5 calories per penny.

Head over to Food Beast to read their review and check out their pics.

Thursday, July 08, 2010

For evidence based bloggers like me the news that ScienceBlogs has just published a new nutrition blog, Food Frontiers was shocking news. It was shocking because it's not being written by some hand-selected blogger, it's being written by Pepsi Cola.

So why does that matter?

Because PepsiCo.'s job isn't to push science or evidence based nutrition, Pepsi's job is to push calories and products that increase shareholder's value with no concern for the public good (unless the public good happens to sell products).

The irony on the blog itself is sugary sweet as well given that Pepsi's products have dramatically increased the burden of disease over the course of the past half century and yet their new ScienceBlog is reporting they're there to,

"Discuss the science behind the food industry’s role in addressing global public health challenges"

PepsiCo. of course isn't stupid. Their job is to make themselves look like the good guys and partnerships with folks like ScienceBlogs allow them to whitewash their sugary laundry in a way that simple press releases cannot.

Of course it's not just me who's upset - have a peek at some of ScienceBlog's own bloggers who are chomping at their own bits:

That's 33% of all current ScienceBloggers either pissed off or gone due Seed's strange decision to start selling blogs.

Interestingly here's what Seed Media Group has to say about how ScienceBlogs goes about choosing their bloggers,

"We have selected our 80+ bloggers based on their originality, insight, talent, and dedication and how we think they would contribute to the discussion at ScienceBlogs."

And yet for Food Frontiers there's no particular voice they've chosen as according to the Food Frontiers sidebar,

"All editorial content is written by PepsiCo's scientists or scientists invited by PepsiCo and/or ScienceBlogs"

My advice to Seed Media - if you're not going to dump Food Frontiers, at the very least change your ScienceBlogs About Us page to reflect the fact that you'll also sell anyone a blog if the price is right because if you didn't haul in a huge wad of dough for this asinine move then you're crazier than I imagine and given who you've just sold out to, I think you're pretty freakin' crazy.

[Update 10:32AM - The word on Twitter is that ScienceBlogs will be dumping Food Frontiers though I haven't seen anything official anywhere

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

According to the Heart and Stroke Jump Rope for Heart parents' page the program is important because,

"The biggest threat today is childhood obesity, with 26% of Canada's children (2 - 17 year olds) being overweight or obese - over 1.6 million!

JUMP FOR A HEALTHIER TOMORROW

At the Heart and Stroke Foundation, we're working hard to stop this trend through programs like Jump Rope for Heart."

One of my reader's elementary school kids participated in this year's Jump Rope for Heart and you wanna guess what they and all their friends received for jumping rope for a few minutes? They each received a coupon for a free kid's meal at Boston Pizza, a Heart and Stroke Foundation mega-sponsor.

Before I get into some numbers, bare in mind that the recommended maximal number of calories per kid's meal is 400 and that a child's recommended daily total sodium intake is 1200mg, and that childhood obesity is the primary driver behind the Heart and Stroke Jump for Heart program.

Now, doing the math on the Heart and Stroke Jump for Heart coupon kid's'meals, the average meal (and full disclosure here, I admittedly didn't include the "Baked Salmon" main or the "Steamed Vegetables" side because what kid in their right mind would order them when eating out at Boston Pizza) contains 742 calories and 1,197mg of sodium - 2 meals worth of calories and a full day's worth of sodium.

But that's just the average. If your kid eats the Boston Pizza grilled chicken sandwich with mayo, a side of fries, a juice and a "Monster Cookie", they'll consume a Heart and Stroke Foundation sponsored 1,293 calories and 2,220mg of sodium along with 10 teaspoons of sugar for good measure.

So there's a few great lessons for these impressionable kids - unhealthy food is a fabulous reward for good deeds and that a few minutes of light exercise earns a highly processed, high calorie, high sodium and high sugar meal.

Oh but parents, don't worry. According to the Jump Rope for Heart website,

"When your child participates, they learn the importance of physical activity, healthy eating and social responsibility."

Because what's healthier than your child eating a full day's worth of calories and two days worth of sodium in one meal at Boston Pizza, and what's more socially responsible than a for-health, non-profit organization like the Heart and Stroke Foundation encouraging families to eat out at restaurants to help combat the scourge of childhood obesity?

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Chalk up another causal win to food in the battle of what's responsible for our current obesity epidemic - this time in the arena of built environment.

Built environment is the term given to the neighbourhood you live in. It has to do with things like walkability, parks, bike paths, sidewalks and all the various and sundry that city planners can do to try to shape your use of where you live.

Built environment is also a hot button issue at obesity conferences with researchers trying to find ways to get people moving more through smarter urban planning.

My belief is that casually moving more doesn't matter too much with regards to obesity. There's simply no amount of sidewalks or bike paths or beautiful parks that you could put in a neighbourhood to help with the issue of obesity because obesity is primarily about energy intake, not energy output, and really no amount of leisurely strolling is going to negate our horrendously calorific food environment.

But built environment does matter. What matters about the built environment though is food and how close you are to it, and what type it is.

In a study published this month in the Journal of Planning Education and Research Samina Raja et al looked at the influence of built and food environments on 172 women's BMIs in Erie County New York between 1999-2004.

What did they find?

1. The more restaurants within walking distance the higher the BMI (p=0.037).

2. The closer you live to a healthful food destination (supermarket), the lower the BMI (p=0.025).

3. Walkability didn't make one whit of difference.

Interestingly the authors listed the fact that they didn't know the types of restaurants as a limitation and suggested that there might be healthier ones. I'd argue, with exceedingly rare exceptions, restaurant food, regardless of whether it's sit down, stand up, casual, or fancy, has non-intuitively, astronomically large numbers of calories.

Ultimately what matters isn't the sidewalks, it's where they take you.

Monday, July 05, 2010

Tolerating a diet's not good enough. If you're only tolerating your new lifestyle you're certainly not likely to keep living it.

Food wise - you can't be regularly battling hunger, it can't be making you feel unwell and your life has to be "normal" meaning you should be able to include food for comfort, food for celebration, with no forbidden foods.

Fitness wise - you can't be running out of time, running out of energy, hurting yourself or hating it.

Ultimately you're aiming for a lifestyle where you can't happily eat any less and you can't happily exercise any more.

Sure we can all improve our lifestyles but to use an extreme example, do you really think you can be a tee-totaling vegan, shut-in, marathon runner forever?

If you can't happily eat less, you're not going to eat less. If you can't happily exercise more, you're not going to exercise more.

Your goal should be your personal best recognizing that the best lifestyle you can enjoy and the best lifestyle that you can tolerate are two very different things.

Is there any other aspect of your life about which you're striving to be "ideal"?

Pharmalot has an interesting piece on the limits of conflicts of interest in scientific publishing. I think ultimately the question can be thought of as is confirmation bias a conflict of interest? Since we all have them, I guess we're all conflicted.

Thursday, July 01, 2010

His name is Alex Bogusky and he's the "Chief Creative Insurgent" (aka the boss) of MDC Partners who according to Wikipedia are the 10th largest advertising agency in the world (and who have one of the coolest websites I've ever seen). Consequently he certainly knows more than you or I do about the ins, outs, evils and lies of advertising and since his clients have included the likes of Burger King, Domino's and Coca Cola to name just a few, he also probably knows more about how Big Food markets than we do.

So what has Alex recently called for on his blog? An advertising award given to the consumer brand that

"takes into consideration all the potential effects of their marketing and have built a plan that carefully avoids abusing the power of advertising"

He's calling it the Cannes Crystal Grand Prix Lion.

More specifically he's calling for a ban on advertising to children as he believes that cognitively they're simply unable to see the world in shades of gray and hence are defenseless,

"As we all know from experience, children are not small grownups. Their brains are fundamentally different, the big difference being that right hemisphere brain development doesn’t really kick in until the age of twelve. This is important because without the right hemisphere involved, all decisions and concepts are very black and white....And this leaves them fundamentally and developmentally unequipped to deal with advertising in the way an adult can."

The picture he paints of a post-children advertising ban is indeed rosy. He sees improved eating as Moms and Dads won't be caving into the pressure to buy their kids the crap their televisions tell them they want and by extension he sees improved parent-child relationships and increased childhood self-esteem. He sees increased incentives for kids to get involved in free thinking play as television networks built off the backs of children's nag power/advertising dollars crumble and kid TV becomes less lucrative to air. He sees companies being forced to make healthier kids' foods as now it'll be left to Mom and Dad to determine what should enter their homes and he sees those companies feeling better about themselves.

Alex once turned down Burger King's kids' marketing campaign and hopes that somewhere out there a major Big Food player's public relations team is going to decide that it'd be well worth it to call for and support a ban on advertising to kids. He figures that North America's ready to applaud just such a move and that applause would serve that insightful firm as all the marketing it needs.

Subscribe via Email

About Me

Family doc, Assistant Prof. at the University of Ottawa, Author of The Diet Fix, and founder of Ottawa's non-surgical Bariatric Medical Institute - a multi-disciplinary, ethical, evidence-based nutrition and weight management centre. Nowadays I'm more likely to stop drugs than start them. You can also follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

Creative Commons License

Disclaimer

Any medical discussion on this page is intended to be of a general nature only. This page is not designed to give specific medical advice. If you have a medical problem you should consult your own physician for advice specific to your own situation. The mission of this blog is to provide readers with critical appraisals of nutrition and weight related claims, products and policies so as to allow readers to make more informed decisions in those areas.

The author will not post anything related to any of his patients personal medical histories or circumstances without their explicit written permission.

Emails are not published with comments and no personal information is collected by this website. If you leave a comment you can choose to delete it. The only comments I actively delete are those containing profanities or spam (links to commercial websites whereby the link is not contextual with the content of the comment). I track comments multiple times daily. Should you choose to leave a comment please provide sources to any health or medical claims made and of course do not post any information that is not true and correct to your knowledge. Unless otherwise specified, please assume any commentator is a non-health professional. You and I are no different - we must both strive to always be respectful and honest.

This site is hosted free of charge by Google's Blogger platform and is intended not only for allied health professionals but also for interested members of the general public.

If you have any concerns feel free to email me at yonifreedhoff [{@}] gmail dot . com